God in the Mountain
by Beabaseball
Summary: Gilbert was born in Snowpoint City. That didn't mean he would stay there. Terminal illness and parental approval be damned, he was going on a pokemon journey-and not being a registered trainer wasn't going to stop him. After all, his goal wasn't League status or gyms. If he was going to die, he was going to die chasing Gods.
1. Chapter 1

**Original Prompt from tumblr: "Gilbert trying to catch the most AWESOME pokemon in the world fic?"**

Gilbert was born in Snowpoint.

People said that he _blended in_ really well there.

People said that, but not for very long. A broken nose tended to help with that maturation process.

So yeah. Gilbert wore hoodies under his snowcoat and got sunglasses instead of socks for his birthdays, because_who the fuck had the patience for sunburns in winter?_ He had some variety of dark clothes and usually ended up standing silhouetted against the snow very dramatically, possibly-not-entirely-not-on-purpose. He punched people who made fun of his eyes and skin, and if he went to the hospital twice as often as he made it to a scheduled doctor's appointment, that just meant he was an active kid. All those times his father hinted that he wouldn't be able to go out and get his trainer's license when he was twelve, because of his, you know, eyes, and skin, and—and his lungs, which weren't really anything you wanted to deal with while traveling on foot, far from any sort of hospital or help—

But not getting a license was? Ridiculous?

Who _didn't_get their trainer's license at twelve, and immediately run to the outskirts of town with a family member to catch your first pokemon? Or take up a family pokemon with battle experience? Or barring that, roadtrip to the nearest adoption center? Get a poochyna puppy for a birthday present, at the very least?

Who didn't?

(When Gilbert was twelve, all those kids with broken noses went off to challenge the League.

With no gap year for travel, he was sent directly to the seventh grade, with all of the trainers who'd returned the year before for school. That was, three trainers. It was a class of four. Three trainers and Gilbert.

In eighth grade, he was suspended for, firstly, brawling with his fists instead of proper battling and, secondly, for sending himself to the hospital.

In ninth grade, he got Chatot. )

000

'Got' might not have been the right word. He _found_Chatot, half-frozen in a mound of snow. A small, ruffled thing that had been blown wildly off course from its yearly migration route between Route 222 and the Azure Bay in Kalos.

It was yellow breasted. Gold tipped wings. Not really moving anymore. Not even able to breathe.

Gilbert scooped it up, cradled it for a moment, considering the chances that this wild pokemon in his arms would suddenly startle and attack. No, though—the bird was frozen solid. Holding it in the crook of his elbow, Gilbert unzipped his winter coat and blue hoodie, slipping the pokemon inside and holding it against his chest. His lungs seized and his arms began to ache, but he zipped the hoodie and coat over the pokemon anyway.

"Fuck shit, motherfucker," he hissed, coughing, needing a moment to get used to the block of ice pressing against his chest.

He hiked home, wheezing. It was only a block or two away, but it seemed a lot longer going than it should've been.

Ludwig met him just inside the door—Gilbert's little brother had already been and gone on his pokemon journey, a record-breaking two days in the wilderness before he turned the fuck back around and demanded to be let back in the house. Something about it not making any sense to have to do a life-threatening journey to prove he was able to handle a job. He had a thing about the sanctity of life, apparently, which was unfortunate since the moment Gilbert walked through the door, the sudden temperature change sent him coughing again.

Ludwig banished him to the living room immediately. With accusatory finger pointing. The house was three rooms in each floor, and two stories tall, with one fireplace on each floor. The downstairs one was currently blazing away, and Gilbert was very succinctly instructed to sit down in front of it while Ludwig went to get something warm for him to drink.

Gilbert had half a mind to walk right back out the door at that kind of talk, but not with a living icecube pressed against his chest.

He settled down by the fire and let it huddle against his chest for a little while longer before finally unzipping his coat to make sure the pokemon was, in fact, still alive.

It slumped over with the jacket no longer supporting it. Gilbert slid his hands under its fragile body and held it up carefully, moving closer to the fireplace and wondering if pokemon recovered from hypothermia the same way humans did.

"What's that?" Ludwig said, standing in the entrance to the room with a mug of something hot and dark.

"A pokemon," Gilbert said, shedding his first layer and wrapping it around the bird.

"Where did it come from?"

"Snowdrift on the way back from school."

"And why didn't you take it to the pokemon center like a reasonable person would?"

He'd never seen Nurse Joy give a home visit before, but she stayed all the way through dinner.

000

Three years after setting out, one of the broken-nosed trainers came back.

He was taller and tanner, the lucky son of a bitch, but his nose was still crooked, and his grin still had its sharp edge. His eyebrows had only gotten comically larger.

He had a ponyta and a runt of an eevee, two badges, which at sixteen meant enough experience to land him an apprenticeship.

Which was. Peachy? Just peachy. He could come into Greasy's Diner to a whole birthday party's worth of whooping and cheering, pleased as punch and sit down to a free brunch.

It was eleven in the morning. Too early for so much cheering, but an okay time for brunch. And Arthur sat down at that table, grinning ear to ear like a cat, glanced sideways and saw—"Oh, Gilbert. You got a license?"

Chatot paused for a moment between pecking its merry way through Gilbert's tater tots. Gilbert grimaced tried to pretend he hadn't been staring at Arthur Kirkland, broken nose extraordinaire, and said, "Do you see any pokeballs on me, man? Motherfucker followed me home one day."

"Motherfucker!" Chatot trilled. "Motherfucker!"

It got a trill of laughter from the small group that had formed around Arthur since his entrance, drawn in by the excitement of a returning trainer. Adults Gilbert hadn't talked to in his life, laughing at Chatot's words, even as a nearby waitress scolded him for using foul language in a child-friendly establishment. Arthur's face twisted for a moment in what looked like embarrassment. If it were secondhand embarrassment, Gilbert was going to break his nose again.

Perhaps fortunately, they went back to their own meals after that. Arthur got a full meal on the house. Toast, eggs, sausage, and potatoes. Chatot ate her tater tots and Gilbert finished his soda and soup, and popped a pill in his mouth. They left at the same time—a total coincidence, surely—and alone.

"Your dad's not around?" Arthur said as they crowded around the door, taking one last moment to put on their hats and scarves and make sure their boots were on right. Gilbert opened up his jacket for Chatot to nuzzle up against his chest before opening the door, careful to not catch any feathers in the zipper.

"I'm not eleven anymore, dude. I'm _your_age, actually. I don't need a fucking escort to the diner. Or is your Ma still insisting on following you everywhere? Did she cheer you on at your first gym?"

Arthur coughed into his fist and shuffled out the door, into the brittle cold. "Right. Sorry."

Gilbert rolled his eyes and trudged ahead.

"So you're not getting your license? Look, if it's about your health, I met a kid younger than me while I was training, Wally something—"

"—you forgot your brother's name?—"

"_Not_my brother, Wally. This one was younger than me. He had green hair and was from Hoenn, all right?" Arthur's red face stood out brilliantly against the snow. Gilbert laughed. "Shut up. Look, I'm _trying_to say that he had some sort of breathing problem, but he made it all the way up to the League steps, so—"

"I'm not making it to the League steps, Kirkland."

Arthur sighed. "Not with that attitude you're not."

Gilbert nodded. "The League's for chumps. Everyone knows it's the pokemon you get that're what's impressive. This not-your-brother-Wally have any cool pokemon?"

Arthur stopped in his tracks. Started again. Stuttering this time. "Uh, well, yes. He had a galade. This, uh, this monstrous electric type, magne, mange something. I hadn't seen it before, but apparently it's native to Sinnoh. And he had a foreign pokemon, a flaming bird."

"Not _Moltres_—"

"No, no, no. Not Moltres. Christ, I would've said that first, if I met someone who'd captured Moltres! No, it was ah, talonflame, I think. Something about talons and fire. These two twins I was traveling with kept singing, 'great balls of fire,' every time it did _anything_, it was dreadful." Arthur sighed again before leveling a long look in Gilbert's direction as they walked. His massive eyebrows only made it all more pronounced. "I thought it would be the kind of pokemon you'd be interested in."

Gilbert snorted ignored Arthur's look, scanning the path ahead of them for ice instead. "Nah, not my thing. I don't do well with dander."

"You've got a bird literally hiding in your coat right now, and you don't do well with dander?"

"I do worse with spores, and she is a _very clean_bird, thank you very much. Besides, you think a giant ashy firebird's gonna do me much better?"

"Well, I was thinking having it's body on fire might burn off any dander."

"Sure—" Gilbert coughed into his first. "—and what's it gonna turn into when it burns?"

Arthur sighed and rolled his eyes. "Ash."

"Yep." Gilbert reached over and ruffled Arthur's hair. His hand was slapped away and was rewarded again with Arthur's beet red face. "Besides, I don't want some fucking baby firebird as my pokemon."

"Oh?" Arthur said, scowling, the red still in his cheeks and the tips of his ears and nose. For the first time, Gilbert wondered if it were something other than embarrassment. Perhaps it was from the nipping wind, which was only whipping stronger, down off the Acuity Plateau. But Gilbert's neighborhood was in sight, he didn't want to walk onto his front step contemplating the reason for Arthur Kirkland's red face. "And what kind of pokemon do you want? Just some stray chatot? How did you even get that thing?"

"A _gold winged_chatot," Gilbert said, sticking his nose in the air and huffing a bit. Maybe huffing too much. The cold and wind and moving weren't helping his breathing much at the moment, but he kept talking. "My first pokemon is a shiny. It's only up from here."

Arthur's sigh came out in a whirl of fog. "And what quantify's 'up' from a _chatot_ that you can't even officially register without your license?"

Gilbert hummed. "Well, I dunno. Maybe I'll go out and illegally catch legendaries."

Arthur tripped over a snowbluff and fell face first into a heap.

Gilbert stepped over him, laughing a little and waiting for Kirkland to get back on his feet before realizing he wasn't the only one laughing. In the snowdrift, Kirkland's shoulders were shaking. When he rolled over to face the sky and gasp in air, his hand covered his mouth and he was blinking back tears.

"Gilbert—h-hey shit, I'm not laughing at you, okay? I just—fuck—you haven't _seen_those sorts of monsters, you'd have to be as good as _Red_ to—Gilbert? Hey! I said I wasn't laughing at you! Get back here!"

000

He kind of thought he could sleep it off.

He'd slept off a lot of things, before. He'd slept through the aftermath of his mother's departure. He'd slept the night of his twelfth birthday. He'd slept through a bunch of nights in the hospital.

Not that night, though.

Chatot wasn't having it much better. She had her own perch at the foot of his bed. She'd claimed it after the first time Gilbert woke up with a face full of feathers and accidentally chucked her across the room while hacking up a lung. She seemed to have forgiven him, but kept to her perch, where tonight she was shifting from foot to foot and cooing unhappily while he rolled from side to side and coughed into the crook of his arm.

In the morning, he stole his father's hiking bag, and packed.

Who had long to live, anyway?

He wasn't some snotty twelve year old who didn't know the first thing about planning.

000

Thermal heating pads, emergency radio, heavily padded grippy-gloves, thermos of hot soup; in Snowpoint City, they were household items. Gilbert took as much as he could sustainably carry and set off for the foot of the Acuity Plateau.

Gilbert was born in Snowpoint. He'd always been in the shadow of a legend.

As the highest place on their part of the mountain range, the plateau controlled the winds in the area. In Snowpoint City itself, the winds blowing were constant, but would be considered mild if not for the sub zero temperatures. Further south, on the routes between the city and Mt. Coronet, the winds fell right off the plateau with blizzard force. Conditions were hazardous at the best of times, deadly at the worst.

The place directly at the foot of the plateau was dead silent. Hardly a whisper of wind to be heard.

No one built houses here. No one set up shop. The forest was as old as the rocks that made up the cliff itself, untouched by man or beast. It was eerie. Gilbert couldn't even see the lights of Snowpoint City from where he stood, though he knew it was less than an hour's hike away. With a slow breath he turned his attention back to the cliff face.

The rocks were rugged, despite hundreds or thousands of years being exposed to the elements. He looked down at his feet and then up again to the place where the edge of the Plateau met the sky. It wasn't—it wasn't but _so_far. And he was sixteen. Pretty tall with some muscle, despite everything. The plateau was only a couple times his height. His breathing was shallow, but that didn't mean much. The jutting rocks off the cliff face would've given any pokemon trouble.

He unzipped his jacket to free Chatot, just in case. Then, he climbed.

His lungs began to give out halfway up. Chatot trilled at him. She swooped and dove behind his back before digging her talons into his shoulders.

"Fuck!" His right hand slipped as he twisted, trying to shake her off or shout her away. One wild swing too far lost him his other handhold. Gravity took him suddenly, he felt himself start to tilt backwards, and started to shout, reaching out to try and grab the cliff face again—

He didn't fall.

His eyes were still wide open. They'd never shut. The sky was very much where it had been a moment ago, and not falling away from him. There was still no wind. Chatot screeched, her talons digging in hard to Gilbert's shoulders and almost entirely supporting his weight, keeping his feet braced in their spots on the cliff.

He found his handhold again, his breathing thin and heart pounding in his chest. His head swam so hard it was difficult to focus on anything in front of him, though the stabbing pain in his shoulders kept him somewhat in the moment.

He considered trying to go down, but his stomach flipped at the thought of trying to look down to see how far he was from the ground. He was not about to vomit halfway up the Acuity Plateau.

Fingers clammy in their gloves and sweating hard, he climbed.

Chatot was too small to carry him like another flying pokemon might've been able to, but she was strong enough to help take some of the weight off his climb; it was worth the pain in his shoulders.

Finally, his first hand gripped the top of the Plateau. While he braced himself for the last few feet, Chatot apparently got fed up of waiting. She dug her talons hard into the back of his coat and started flapping hard enough that Gilbert's feet left their footholds. She dragged him the last few feet onto the edge of the plateau and collapsed.

Gilbert got a faceful of snow for his part.

The snow was hard. Really hard. He made a dent where he lay, sure, but it made a dent in him, too.

Chatot hadn't fared much better. The fucking yellow ragmuffin shivered so badly, all Gilbert could do was unzip his coat and make sure the thermal hand warmer he'd shoved into an inside breast pocket was still working. Chatot spotted the motion with her keen eyes and hobbles towards him. He zipped her in.

They lay like that for a while, breathing hard and warming up. Getting over the ache in their shoulders—he was pretty sure Chatot's wings were going to ache after trying to fly with a human in her clutches.

Gilbert wasn't sure how long they were there. He didn't have a watch and hadn't checked the time before they left. It was a Saturday, no school the next day, so he had time. Not that he was planning on going again, though home was much closer than the end of a quest, and—should he be thinking about school and going home when he just got to the top of the Acuity Plateau?

He sat up. Chatot squawked against his chest. "Motherfucker!"

Shouldn't there be more wind?

He got up slowly, not just for Chatot's benefit, and looked around.

There was no wind. Not even when he knew all the winds of the Snowpoint mountain range were supposed to go right overtop it. He couldn't even hear the winds he'd hiked through howling.

There was no wind. Just a vast, still lake with a grassland on the far shore. Large pine trees stood guard, trees taller than any building ever made. He hadn't, hadn't he—he hadn't seen them from the ground. It was a wonder if they couldn't been seen from the ground, with how—_how_ tall?—how was the sunlight so bright with so many monstrous trees?

There was no legend in the lake, only an island. When Gilbert moved closer to investigate, the water was dark and murky, and utterly still. He was tempted to stick something in to see how deep it was, though he got the idea the lake was far, far deeper than he'd ever be able to wade. Far colder than any human should try to swim.

There was no legend and no wind. Only a lake, and a distant grassland, and an island.

A single ripple rolled over the surface of the water, and then was still again.

000

**A/N**

**Though not exclusive to albinos, parents with albino children displaying lack of pigmentation in the hair and eyes are advised to keep on the lookout for frequent coughing or difficulty breathing, as it may be a symptom of a serious and eventually fatal disease, pulmonary fibrosis, which is characterized by the growth permanent growth of scar tissue in the lungs. Pulmonary fibrosis is common, but each specific type is rare. It becomes more common as a population grows older. It may be a secondary effect of other diseases or, more uncommonly, simply appear without any known cause, known as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF).**

**40,000 people in the US die annually to IPF, the same number as die to breast cancer. IPF is one of the few diseases remaining to which the FDA has no approved treatments, no known cure, no definitive cause.**

**Symptoms include coughing, dry hacking, fatigue and weakness, chest discomfort and pain, chronic shortness of breath (particularly with exertion) , rapid weight loss, and lack of appetite.**

**Lung transplants are regarded as a last resort option.**

**Gilbert's case of IPF is advanced, especially for his age.**

**Medical information was gathered by googling on the internet and may therefore be inaccurate. Apologies in advance for any exaggeration or underexaggeration of the symptoms displayed in this fanfiction.**


	2. Chapter 2

It wasn't really important how Gilbert got to Canalave City—

(it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that both Snowpoint and Canalave were shipping towns, with boats coming and going from harbor all the time, and _no he did not mail himself to Canalave in a crate, what the fuck, that would be dangerous_.)

—it was important that Canalave had the largest library in Sinnoh, and Gilbert had some studying to do.

On his arm written in sharpie was a glorious checklist that went something like this:

pokemon training for assholes what to bring when you're completely alone in the wilderness for days at a time running away from home for assholes legends of Sinnoh

That last one had a lot of books dedicated to it. Most of them saying the same things over and over. Gilbert slept on the library floor with a blanket and not much else, which was okay since apparently growing up in Snowpoint made you hardier when it came to long, cold, dark nights. He'd brought the thermos with him and alternated between drinking tea and drinking soup while checking his cellphone at night, responding to Ludwig's frantic texts with a deep breath and strong compulsion to roll his eyes.

His little brother's worried. His little brother's pokemon journey lasted two days. Gilbert's been gone a week, and is starting to suspect Ludwig didn't come back because he thought pokemon journeys were ridiculous, but because of _worry_, and that is unacceptable.

(One night when he wakes up with a pounding headache and aching chest, he sends a text saying so, and deletes all of Ludwig's replies until the replies just stop coming.)

The texts from Arthur are less expected, but just as exasperating.

Something about, 'can't believe you would actually do that.'

As if Gilbert hadn't been warning them about it his whole life.

000

Canalave he stayed in for several weeks. The librarians got to know his name and a neighborhood purloin started coming up to him for ear scratches, but he couldn't sleep under the table forever. There were no legends in Canalave as far as he could tell (not that there were any in Snowpoint, either, apparently) but without some income he would soon run out of things to put in his thermos, and there was only so much to be done with a library's break room microwave.

He reread the last three pokemon training manuals before setting out—

(not being allowed to participate in sports his whole life was good for his reading level. Suck it, Kirkland.)

—and completely annihilating the first trainer he spotted outside the Canalave gates.

He and Chatot must have had pent up aggression, because Gilbert didn't even feel _bad _when the kid ran off crying, cradling his shellos' pokeball to his chest. Gilbert was too busy looking at the prize money in his hand, turning to Chatot with a wide grin on his face, saying, "How many times you think we gotta do this before I can buy a four-wheeler?"

000

He met Ivan in Jubilife.

A cinderblock wall of a man, Ivan sat down across from Gilbert at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant and asked, very politely and very quietly, if Gilbert was a trainer and would like to have a battle.

A little high on having blazed right through route 218 without a hitch and gathering enough money to live on comfortably for a while, Gilbert agreed without a second thought. They went to the park outside the downtown area, set up in a spot pretty devoid of spectators or playing children, and began.

Gilbert was beaten into the ground.

Or, he ended up on the ground somehow, anyway. The last couple of seconds went a little fuzzy.

Even on her last legs, Chatot still managed to do better than him, hobbling over to stand guard at Gilbert's shoulder, snapping at Ivan's legs when the trainer got too close.

Ivan's ursaring took offense and moved in, raising a paw to knock her out of the way, but on Ivan's instruction, merely scooped Chatot up and away as she furiously pecked and scratched, trying to escape the paws the size of her body.

Gilbert would have tackled the ursaring to get his birdy back if his lungs didn't sieze again and a heavy hand landed on his back, rubbing over his shoulder blades in small circles.

Once Gilbert managed upright finally, his first act was to swat the offending hand away and glare the ursaring into releasing his birdy. She popped out of the ursaring's grip, scowling furiously, and bouncing to Gilbert's side.

"Asthma?" Ivan asked

Gilbert shook his head, grins a little, and pretends his chest isn't stupidly sore. Stupid body. Stupid soreness. "You fucking wish."

Chatot twittered her approval.

"I did not realize the loss would take so much out of you," Ivan said. "And I actually thought you had… more pokemon?"

"Why? Most people seem to have only like, one or two?" 

"The shining chatot was out, and… how many badges do you have?"

Gilbert debated his answer. He was severely temped to say, 'all of them,' but that kind of lie might get him dragged into a back alley, and that was some bullshit. "Zilch."

"….zilch?"

"I don't have any badges, dude. 'S'what it means."

Ivan furrowed his brow deeply. "You defeated my sneasel before Ursaring bested you. That sneasel has defeated three gyms personally, and she has a type advantage."

"Yeah? But sneasel are just sneasel. They're kinda useless in a flat park like this, since there aren't many trees or buildings for them; and there's only so high up they can jump, and they're only good at ice shit when it's already pretty cold out, otherwise they're just quick brawlers. Chatot could literally just fly around your sneasel's head all day until it's exhausted and can't fight back," Gilbert huffed as his breath came back easier.

"Ursaring is not much different than sneasel in that regard," Ivan said, still watching him closely. It was kind of unnerving. Ivan was kind of an unnerving guy, Gilbert decided. His voice had yet to rise above a gentle whisper. 

"Your Ursaring shot a fucking laser out of its mouth. Shut up. I think you gave me palpations, holy shit. Overkill. What the fuck. Chatot did nothing to deserve that."

Finally, a small, embarrassed grin worked its way onto Ivan's face. "I thought you had other pokemon."

"So you fucking said."

"I mean to say, I thought you were more experienced!"

"Hey! I will not be disrespected like that! I think I'm pretty fucking good for having started this bullshit less than a week ago!"

000

Ivan offered to share his room in the pokemon center as an apology.

After Chatot was checked in for an overnight stay.

After a slipup revealing Gilbert didn't have a place to stay yet.

Or anything saved for dinner. Or a license.

(It was pretty illegal to participate in pokemon battles for reward money without a license, but instead of calling the police, Ivan got a weird look on his face when he found out and starting laughing until he was also on the ground beside Gilbert, so that was probably a good sign.)

Which was all pretty weird, considering Ivan was the sort of person who trained a sneasel. There was a specific sort of person who trained sneasels. Most of them were sketchy as fuck, or had lived their whole life stranded on the tundra.

He was not actually a career trainer. He wasn't traveling for gym badges or league recognition, but to write a book. Sinnoh was the third region he'd outside his home region. If not for a few weird turns of phrase, Gilbert would have believed Ivan had only lived a region or so over.

When Ivan learned that Gilbert had a bit of a habit of chronicling memorable events in his pokenav, they started swapping tidbits and stories, and kept going all the way to the pokemon center front desk talking about a wild encounter Ivan'd had in Orre involving a wheeled trash bin full of feces and three days worth of potato peels.

Promise of weird stories, dinner, and a bed was plenty good enough to take a chance on spending the night with a stranger.

The first night in the pokemon center—one of three nights there—Gilbert showered for the first time in a week and settled into the first bed he'd slept in since his own back in Snowpoint. He'd even managed to fill his prescription at the center; a newly filled bottle sat proudly on his bedside table. His phone was beeping every few seconds as a new text message rolled in, having been delayed for the last three days ever since his phone finally died, and was only now being charged once more.

"You're not like, keeping tally of shit, right?" Gilbert said. "I don't wanna end up on some weird mile-long debt list."

Ivan laughed (but neither confirmed nor denied that a list of debts was being made, somewhere) and continued changing into his pajamas out of Gilbert's line of sight. The most Gilbert saw were the jacket and scarf coming off—some vicious looking burns crawled up Ivan's chest and halted abruptly at a white fabric brace-looking thing wrapped tight around his neck, where the scarf usually covered. The pjs were full body, covering anything else of interest. "I am still feeling bad about making you collapse."

"I'm not fucking invalid. That was literally hours ago. Grow up," Gilbert said, trying to be polite and not eyeball the scars; maybe Ivan had a _bit _of an idea about trying to battle when your body was trying to sabotage you. He waited for Chatot to chime in with a 'motherfucker!' and was momentarily thrown when she wasn't at the foot of his bed to do so. Goddamn bird. Getting ill and hurt, and having to be taken to the hospital, and making him worry.

"What was it, though?" Ivan said. "You said not asthma." 

"Isn't that kind of a personal question?" Gilbert said, grumbling enough to finally get up the motivation to kick off his shoes and pausing a moment to cough his throat clear. "Asking someone if they have an incurable lung disease? Seriously?"

Ivan seemed to take a moment to mull that over before nodding. "And where are you headed? Illegally battling pokemon won't get you far in a league challenge."

Gilbert snorted. "I'm not doing a league challenge, I know how well that'd go. I'm looking for crazy strong pokemon."

"With that Chatot?" Ivan said, grinning. "What, are you thinking you'll encounter, a 'crazy strong' wurmple?"

"I will only listen to criticism from someone who doesn't say 'wurmple,' like he's purring," Gilbert said, leaning back in his bed and scowling.

"Rude," Ivan said, not even having the decency to look offended. "But really, what are you expecting to catch with only one pokemon and no legal way to obtain pokeballs?" 

"Well," Gilbert crossed his arms over his chest and inspected his finger nails. "I was kinda gonna go with the kinda pokemon that you don't fight or expect to capture with pokeballs in the first place."

Now the guy looked mildly concerned, with his forehead wrinkling and a slight frown on his face. It was far too much like an expression Kirkland would've worn.

"Where, exactly, are you trying to get to?"

There was a brief pause. "Right now? Lake Verity."

He waited for a few seconds, expecting some sort of interjection or shout of shock and disbelief, or even the same wild laughter Kirkland gave him. Instead, when he looked, he found Ivan staring down at the floor from where he sat on the edge of his bed, brows furrowed and biting his lip in deep thought.

He stayed like that a while, worrying at his lip and occasionally letting out a deep hum, but looking the furthest thing from surprised.

Finally, Ivan looked up and met Gilbert's gaze. "How do you plan on catching something like that?"

"Oh, uh," Gilbert said, fumbling a moment and leaning over the side of his bed to pick up the travel bag he'd been using. Out of it, he pulled out pages from vandalized Canalave library books. "There's not really—any concrete way? I've got a couple ideas. I mean—"

He started flipping rapidly through the torn out pages, peeking at his handwritten notes and then tossing pages aside one by one as he searched for the information he'd gathered on Lake Verity. Ivan stared at the notes from his own bed and then moved closer to read them himself. _Let no one ever say I didn't do my research_, he thought.

"—I mean, they're all different pokemon, so I'd have to approach them all in different ways. It's all trial and error, which is a really shitty thing to have to use when you're dealing with beings of infinitesimal power?"

Ivan nodded at him. "That does sound like a pain in the ass."

"It totally is. So I've got a few backup plans. See, Mesprit, Azelf, and Uxie—first off, I don't even know if they _exist _because Uxie wasn't in Lake Acuity and… dude, don't give me that look, I scaled a cliff face alone just to be disappointed, okay? Back off. But yeah, I don't know if they exist, but they have these gems in their tails, which function as anchors to the world and…"

"Worst comes to worst, you could probably talk it into submission," Ivan said.

Gilbert paused mid-explanation and turned to stare at him, mouth still hanging open.

"Wow," he said. "Just wow. I am just. I am beyond words right now. _Rude_."

000

Initially, Ivan said he could get Gilbert as far as Sandgem. Yet, after the night in the Sandgem pokemon center, he got up with Gilbert in the morning and hiking beside him through the woods to Twinleaf. Neither of them mentioned it.

The town of Twinleaf was a huddle of houses without even a pokemon center to its name. It was right on the Verity lakefront, so close that the edge of the shimmering blue waters could be seen through the trees. Just a bundle of whitewashed houses, quietly living closer to a lake than Gilbert had ever been in his first sixteen years of life.

It was so small, Gilbert worried for a long moment that they would have to camp outdoors if they didn't wrap up in time to hike back to Sandgem before dark—not that hiking back sounded all that fun, either. He could do two hikes in one day again, and he could sleep on the ground in the woods again, but he had gotten pretty attached to lounging in pokemon centers in the short week he'd been traveling with Ivan.

Fortunately, he was wrong. There were three bed-and-breakfasts in town, one of which had a small sign hanging in its window declaring they had pokemon-specific medical supplies on hand for free.

A little crossroads town.

(The whole thing kind of set Gilbert's teeth on edge, though he couldn't have put his finger on why.)

Before heading to the lake, they rested a while and ate lunch at a small restaurant so familial, Gilbert wasn't sure if they and some twenty other strangers were in fact eating in someone's living room. Framed pictures of a few local pro trainers hung on the wall, alongside a few sports starts and racecars posters above the couches. All the tables were surrounded by padded chairs and covered in patterned table clothes and woven napkins. No piece of silverware matched its neighbor and brightly colored rugs covered the floor. Strings of popcorn and bottle caps hung from the rafters.

Ivan seemed to find the place charming, smiling more than usual and loosening his scarf as they ate. Unzipping his jacket. If Gilbert didn't grab him by the arm and drag him to the lake soon, they might ended up staying in a bed-and-breakfast without even getting the chance to look around.

Twinleaf seemed like a nice place. But not _that _nice.

"Hey, hey. We're here for the lake, remember? Let's try to," fuck hiking, "wrap this up in one day and head back to Sandgem for the night. Besides, the Sandgem nurse was cute and I wanna ask their phone number."

"Are you sure?" Ivan said, fidgeting with the edges of his scarf and taking another bite of his sandwhich. "It wouldn't be trouble to stay here the night. And you can get their number tomorrow just as easily."

"We can do that if we have to," Gilbert said. He jabbed the brightly colored table cloth with a finger. "But let's _plan_ on heading back before tonight, okay? We can come back to Twinleaf later."

They would not be coming back to Twinleaf. It was way too snuggly. On his shoulder, Chatot crowed out a "Fuck yeah! Fuck yeah!"

Gilbert was starting to regret teaching her curse words, but he gave her a piece of bread anyway and hoped the people turning to stare at their table would back off soon.

Ivan snorted and smiled at him. "Fine, fine. So what is this plan you have for meeting the legend?"

"I'll figure that out if it even exists and is there," he said, forcing out a laugh and giving Ivan a hard pat on the back. "The last time I tried I couldn't even get close." 

"Have you ever actually seen a legendary?"

Gilbert shook his head. "Have you?"

Ivan also shook his head. "Though I haven't gone looking for them, before." 

"Yeah, well, count yourself lucky. You'll get to see the awesome me making up plans on the go."

"Mmh," he nodded again. "And what's phase one of the plan?"

"Gather information—which I am gonna finish up in just a minute. Sit tight and don't strip naked, okay?"

"Okay, I—what?"

Gilbert got up and left their table, looking around for wait-staff to talk to. As much as the town suddenly felt like a strange foreign entity, he wasn't about to go to the doorstep of a legend without getting a little bit of local folklore.

He asked the waiter and a person at the table next to them. Once they'd paid and evacuated the stiflingly familial restaurant, he asked a passerby on the street and the desk clerk of the B&amp;B supplying pokemon-specific medical supplies.

No one really had much to say.

It was apparently a pretty good picnic spot. Brought in tourists, mostly in the summer—he and Ivan were about two months too early for the season boom—and yeah, there was a legend about some pokemon that danced on the waves every now and then, but most people tacked it up to an interesting optical illusion caused by sunlight on the water.

"You know how it is," the clerk said, summing up anything Gilbert had learned. "When you live in a place, you never actually _go_ to the touristy places in it. I know a guy who lived in Eruteak in Johto, and he literally never went to their Tower unless it happened he had errands in the area. Even then, he didn't actually go in. Or to any ceremonies or see the dancers perform. It's all for the tourists, you know? No one local really buys into that stuff when you live in a place."

Gilbert nodded, and kept the memory of Lake Acuity to himself.

He bought a disposable camera, just in case all he got was a glimpse and a few long minutes staring at an island—just in case. Lake Acuity, however eerie it had been, was still just a quiet lake at the top of the world. Lake Verity was probably a still lake in a basin.

There was no cliff face to scale this time, for which Gilbert was grateful. Just a steady, grassy decline into the valley of the lake.

The trees rose up around them like towers, but here, the pokemon in the woods were still sounding their cries, and a steady warm breeze rattled the foliage. It made sense, now, that Twinleaf Town was built so close to the lake—the place felt real, not like a caricature of a lake, or a place that could be trespassed into. The grassy path was open and clear of tangles, and when they came upon it, the waters of the lake were clear and blue.

Lake Verity was huge.

It stretched from shore to shore, wide enough that though Gilbert could see the island in the middle, he couldn't see the far shore aside from the wall of trees that seemed to make it up. Perhaps Ivan had better luck, if his eyes were any better than Gilbert's.

He tried to take a deep breath and started hacking on pollen while Ivan laughed and stretched his arms back, cracking them, before unbuttoning his coat.

"Why don't we wait here a while?" Ivan said, rolling his shoulders back once they were free and folding his coat carefully on the ground. The midday sun was bright overheard and a pleasant breeze blew through the area. Hesitantly, Gilbert followed him, shedding his outer layer. It was far too hot to be wearing a coat or hoodie. It was almost too hot for a shirt, but taking that off wasn't an option.

Chatot left Gilbert's shoulders and fluttered to the ground, preening for a moment before digging into the grass with her talons and flapping her wings hard enough to whip up a small whirlwind. She cheered and twittered, 'awesome! Awesome!'

"We can hang out here once we check out the cave. It _is _a really nice day." Gilbert said crouching down nearby her and fishing through his travel bag for a bottle of sunscreen. The idea of laying down on the grass and not moving for a few hours did sound like a pretty awesome idea, pollen or no pollen. But that didn't mean he was going to get a sunburn for it. "You said you've got a surfing pokemon, right?"

Ivan nodded and while Gilbert put on a new layer of sunscreen—his second of the day. He offered Ivan a coating of it as well, which was accepted—and pulled out a little blue pokeball that every few minutes let out a wild twitch.

Sneasel was also pretty ready to get into the nice weather, apparently. Weird little ice monster. It took a little coaxing to get her into the water and willing to ferry them one at a time to the island, but she took too it quickly after the first dip in the lake.

Ivan went first, since it was his pokemon and he would be the one to best direct her where to go. It took about fifteen minutes for Sneasel to cross the lake with a human, five minutes to return, so for a full twenty minutes Gilbert waited at the bank, dreading his eventual fifteen minute dip.

It wasn't as bad as he'd imagined. The water was lukewarm and not unpleasant in the heat of the day, and as long as he didn't wiggle too much, Sneasel was very good about not splashing him too much.

After fifteen minutes of clinging to the small pokemon, they made it ashore. Gilbert stumbled a little at first, trying to shake the water out of his clothes. Above head, Chatot cackled and laughed at his vain attempts to dry off. She landed on the top of the mound and stayed there, preening and cooing.

It wasn't a big deal to be wet, he supposed. He was just going to get back in the lake soon, anyway. Still, he would have liked to have gone into the cave a little dryer.

Resigned to his soggy fate, Gilbert straightened up and looked around the island they'd landed on. There was only a thin line of land surrounding the mound at the center, just enough room for a person or two to walk comfortably side by side on. Sneasel contended herself by the edge of the water, Chatot was still perched at the top of the mound, oblivious to anything but the strong sunshine, and Ivan was nowhere to be seen.

There was, not far from the entrance to the mound, a single large damp spot where he may have sat down, and then nothing else. Any soggy footprints had died during however much time had elapsed between the big lug getting up and Gilbert's arrival.

Perhaps twenty minutes in the direct sunlight proved too much and he retreated into the cave? Gilbert hadn't been paying much attention to the goings-on on the shore during his trip, so it he may have only just missed Ivan's retreat. Or maybe the tunnel on the other side of the entrance was simply particularly deep, and Ivan went in intending to explore, and hadn't yet realized Gilbert had arrived. Or he may have been waiting on the inside for Gilbert to join him. If he thought he was going to pop out of the shadows and startle anyone, he had another thing coming. Specifically, a broken nose.

Huffing a bit and trying to not grin, Gilbert made to follow him.

On such a bright day, the looking at the entrance to the mound was like peering into a void.

Something inside it peered back.

000

It had big, yellow eyes.

"Uh," Gilbert said. "Ivan?"

There was no reply.

Ivan didn't have any pokemon whose eyes glowed like that.

Gilbert stayed at the cave entrance, one hand on the hot rock of the outside of the mound. The sun was right at his back, he realized. And by all means it should have been blasting its rays directly into the cave, lighting it up at least enough for him to see past the front entrance.

The eyes continued watching him. Gilbert didn't dare look away. Even as much as he wanted to turn his head and stare out at the sunlight and beautiful day that had surrounded them the whole hike, he wasn't about to look away from those eyes.

He took a slow, shaking step into the cave.

The warmth of the day drained away. He could feel where it had once been, like grime on an old bathtub left after the water ran dry. Remnant sunlight and warmth smeared and went cold on his arms. The hairs on the back of his neck rose up.

"Ivan?" he said again. The yellow eyes blinked at him.

Gilbert took a deep breath, smiled at the big yellow eyes, and prayed. "Hey! Uh. Hey. Sorry to barge into your whole cave like this. Are you Mesprit? I almost didn't recognize you, _wow_, your eyes are… really pretty. Uh. They're totally wild."

The eyes blinked again, but Gilbert wasn't dead yet, so that was probably a good sign.

"Yeah, yeah, it's totally the eyes, you must be using a new eyeshadow or something… or uh. You been redecorating? The place looks great. Say, I don't want to hold you up, I'm actually just looking for my friend? Really tall guy," Gilbert lifted up his hand high above his head, about where he felt Ivan stood. "Relatively quiet, really likes books and stuff. Have you seen him around here? I just wanna grab him and then I'll probably get out of your hair."

The eyes blinked again, and the thing—it _must_ have been Mesprit, what else could it have been?—the thing cocked its head to the side. Gilbert could hardly see the outline of the small body in the dark, but his eyes were adjusting quickly, bad as his sight may have been, and he sure hoped the faint outline he saw was indeed Mesprit's body. It struck him a moment later that the books hadn't ever mentioned how large the lake guardians were supposed to be. He wasn't sure if a giant or a squirt would be more threatening, at this point. The eyes themselves were bad enough.

Swallowing a bit, Gilbert shuffled his feet. He slid backwards, holding out his hands and backing away until his fingers brushed the inside of the damp cave wall.

"So I'm going off the theory that you can understand what I'm saying? I mean, other pokemon can kinda tell what we're saying, but since you're like, ancient, no one's _totally _sure if you can or not? So I'm assuming you know what I'm saying and that I… don't mean any harm?"

The yellow eyes narrowed. A low, deep coo rose up from the cave floor.

Gilbert swallowed again. Keeping one hand on the wall of the cave, he edged his way further inside, despite how much he was totally down for turning the fuck around and getting out of here as fast as he could. Ivan hadn't been anywhere on the island, so he must have entered the cave and run into the thing—maybe he was knocked out. Please let him just be knocked out.

"So I heard you were a really nice guy. Girl. Ethereal being? Do you have a pronoun I don't know about? Look, I just heard you were supposed to be pretty nice compared to a lot of other folks around, so uh, I was thinking we could all sit down and have a little parlay or something likeeeeeaaaaaaaaaiiighhhht—?"

For a moment, he thought his legs were shaking. Then he realized the whole cave had started to tremble, starting with the stones on the floor and running its way up through the dirt walls of the cave.

"There's really no need for that!" he said, edging further still into the dark. His already-soaked shoe sank suddenly into a puddle. He sank in with a squealch and sucking noise, louder than anything else in the cave.

He jerked his foot upright, but the mud was thick and heavy, almost taking his shoe off. He fell down instead, tumbling onto his knees and catching himself on his hands. His palms seared and began to bleed a moment later when he regained himself.

He pushed himself back upright as soon as he could, his back smacking against the cave wall. He ignored his bleeding palms and aching knees, looking left and right as fast as he could. In the few moments between falling to the ground and getting back up, the yellow eyes had vanished. The shaking stopped.

His muddy shoe began sinking in again.

Voice cracking, he called out for Ivan once more. No echo called back to him. No reply.

He swallowed down his apprehension once more and edged further along the wall, both feet meeting the mud and water. He kept going, sliding his hands along the wall.

He realized for the first time how loudly he was breathing. It wasn't because of lack of air for once, or physical exertion—his chest heaved and he was gasping loudly through his mouth. He could breathe _fine _, which was ridiculous, because this place was certainly filled with fungus and mold spores, but his breath was still the loudest thing; filling his ears, filling the room.

The trills and warbles of wild pokemon weren't reaching the inside of the cave; neither was the gentle breeze or rustling leaves from the forest. All of it stopped as surely as the sunlight at the cave entrance—he was almost directly across from the entrance, now. The only sounds were his breathing, the squealching of his shoes in the mud, and water.

_Drip_

The cave was a dome.

He reached the back, stepping in another long row of water as he did.

_Drip _

Finally, he hit something else.

As he shuffled along at the back of the dome, his foot connected solidly with something that was neither rock nor water; it had give to it. Dropping down to his knees again, Gilbert reached out and felt over what he had hit.

A shoe. A leg.

"Ivan," he said, hardly able to hear himself over the sound of his own lungs.

_Drip_

A small, cold finger brushed against his elbow.

"MOTHERFUCKER, MOTHERFUCKER!"

Gilbert jerked away, cradling his numbing elbow to his chest, just as Mesprit was body slammed into the mound wall by an enraged, swearing bird.

The coo from before echoed through the room again—this time pained and sharp, but the earth didn't tremble under his feet and the cry was drowned out almost entirely by Chatot's screeching.

For a moment, the cave seemed to lighten. As Gilbert scrambled to find all of Ivan's limbs, he swore for a moment he could see Chatot wrangling with the legend in the cave.

He had just found Ivan's head and felt the faint breath on his arm when Chatot let out a howl of pain and collided with Gilbert's back. He fell forward, scraping his chin against the dirt floor and coming up with a face full of mud.

He twisted onto his side, one hand holding Ivan's wrist and one foot kicking out wide. The kick landed; a small, light body took the blow and somersaulted away. It wasn't a hard hit and the legend wasn't thrown very far, but it was long enough for Chatot to hop back up and take to the air again.

"Go for the gems!" Gilbert shouted, scrambling back onto his knees and hoisting Ivan's arm over his shoulder. "The gems in its tail! Scratch them out!"

Chatot crowed. With a flurry of wind, she dove back into the fight. Gilbert wrapped an arm around Ivan and tried once again to get him over his shoulder—how long had the guy been knocked out? Hopefully Mesprit had only hypnotized him into a sleep and not give him a head wound—and dragged the larger trainer as fast as he could towards the light of the entrance. He almost didn't notice Mesprit's screech of agony.

He felt, for a moment, something collide with Ivan and make him stumble under the sudden weight.

"Chatot? Are you okay?" he called, readjusting his grip on Ivan's arm when the collision made it slip, and

Gilbert was no longer holding an arm. His fingers closed around air.

"Ivan?"

There was no longer a body on his back. Nor the screech of a violent pokemon battle behind him.

"Chatot, come here!" he said, reaching his arms out in any direction he could, feeling around for his bird. His knees went weak when the feathered nitwit landed on his shoulder, her talons digging in hard and leaning her little bird head against his ear.

She warbled weakly.

He scooped her off his shoulder, not caring about the two long gashes that earned him. He cradled her against his chest and sprinting for the entrance, skidding and slipping in mud and water. Twice they almost fell to the ground. The dome seemed much smaller now that he wasn't creeping around the edge of it like a frightened child, but any time between starting to run and reaching the opening was too long.

He burst through the cave entrance, Chatot clutched to his chest, and was blinded.

The roar of the wind and shrieking of the pokemon were deafening. The sun hit right in his eyes as he ran.

A moment later, he hit the lake.

000

He thrust Chatot above water, first. A long moment later, his face broke the surface He came up coughing and gasping, and blind.

Twice, waves rolled up over his head, water forcing into his mouth, before his flailing finally brought them back to the shallows around the island again, and was able to stumble onto solid footing.

When he opened his eyes again, the world was coated in a thin film of blue. Chatot bounded away from him, ruffled and blabbering.

Blinking water out of his eyes and snorting hard; he pinched his nose and tried to remember how to breathe.

He stumbled three feet back onto the shore and collapsed back down to his knees. His elbow burned. So did his face, and his palms, and his knees, where his scrapes were still open and bleeding, but his elbow was growing numb so quickly it hurt.

Without a thought, Gilbert swung his elbow against the ground, and gasped again out of reflex when it hit. A few rocks and grains of dirt stuck in his skin as he lifted the trembling limb again, but the pain didn't come. Just a dull, painful and unsettling numb where he could _feel _the changes in the skin, but not—not the—

He blinked his eyes again and rubbed at them with his other hand, trying hard to control his voice. Blood from his palm smeared his face.

"Chatot?" he said. Held his numbing elbow to his chest. Looked around.

She shuffled up beside him, curling against his leg. Her feathers were all out of place and sopping wet. Her little taloned feet were covered with red dust.

"Sneasel?"

He looked around again. The little ice monster was nowhere to be seen.

Gilbert looked back at the entrance to the cave, as dark and bottomless as it had been when he'd first set foot on the island. Silent. Peaceful.

The sun was still high in the sky. The breeze blew slowly and he could hear the gentle rolling of the waves on the lake and the murmur of pokemon in the woods. He looked up and saw a few stray winged pokemon silhouetted against the sky.

One shape soared alone, separate from any flock. A small, many-limbed thing with two long, thin tails that glinted red in the sunlight.

Something caught in Gilbert's throat as he saw it.

Chatot hopped into his lap and cooed at him.

He tore his eyes away from the sky to look at her.

"Sorry," he said, his throat sore from water and coughing and—everything was sore but his elbow, really. Still, he lifted his uninjured arm and brushed his fingertips around Chatot's comb. "You did really awesome in there. I fucked it up a bit, but you pulled through."

"Awesome," Chatot cooed, "Awesome!"

"Yeah," he said, smiling faintly. "You sure are."

000

It wasn't important how he got back across the lake. It wasn't important how long the trek back to Sandgem was. He wasn't going back to Twinleaf, and he wasn't going back to the island. It was late when he reached the pokemon center. It was late when he collapsed.

He checked Chatot into the pokemon center and quietly, systematically, pulled a row of chairs away from the wall, folded his jacket into a pillow, and lay behind the row of chairs, letting them act as a wall between him and the rest of the waiting room.

He lay there for three days. Three days until he regained feeling in his elbow.

Regained feeling in his legs.

Feeling his lungs.

And his heart.

On the third day, a chansey pulled him free by his wrists.

000

**Mesprit and the rest of the lake guardians are neither categorized as malevolent or benevolent. Mesprit has a tendency to not be harmful towards humans, but it is very mischievous, wielding the power of teleportation and control over emotions. The red gems in its tail act as an anchor to the world and, when combined with the other four gems from Uxie and Azelf, can be forged into a red chain with the power to bind any pokemon, including other legendary pokemon. **

**It is said that if one touches Mesprit, three days later, their emotions will disappear. When Mesprit flies, emotions are born.**


	3. Chapter 3

Gilbert woke in a hospital.

For the brief moment after regaining consciousness but not coherency, his thoughts rolled somewhere between _that dream was way too realistic _and _gotta tell the docs to not give me that med anymore._

Then, he heard the buzzing of cars and faint music outside. A low rumble of feet on pavement. No birdcalls. No howling snorunt.

He jerked upright—swum, for a moment. Gasped in breath like he'd been smothered.

There was an IV stuck in the back of his hand. The heart rate monitor had slipped of his finger and was flatlining in the background, so a nurse would be in soon.

Gilbert held still just long enough for his head to stop floating three feet above his head, threatening to drop him back into unconsciousness. When it was firmly back between his shoulders, he reached out for the IV stand and checked to see if it had wheels. Gripping the pole of the stand, he slid out of bed, nearly busting his kneecap on the bedside table in the process.

How long had he been out?

An IV stand with wheels was not an ideal crutch by any stretch of the imagination, but between it and the bedframe, Gilbert crossed the room without any more trouble and gazed out the window.

Jubilife.

Not Snowpoint.

Not Snowpoint, like he'd first thought when he woke. Not a hospital in Snowpoint to spend another overnight, not a hospital in Snowpoint because he'd never been anywhere _but _Snowpoint, not a hospital in Snowpoint like he'd thought it was when he first woke up and saw the pale ceiling and walls, with only two windows on the left side of the room and a clock directly across from the bed, television mounted in the corner— the same setup he'd seen a hundred times before.

He was in Jubilife again. The air tasted like fast food, not ice, and he was still free.

The opening of the door jolted him out of his shock. He didn't jump, but he was already surprised enough by his location that he spun around to see the perpetrator quickly enough that he knocked into his IV stand and almost lost his footing.

The nurse automatically attained A+ grading, because she didn't shout at him being out of bed and stumbling all over himself. She just hurried over, made sure he was steady, and calmly stated that she was very glad he'd finally woken up. She silenced the still-whining heart monitor.

"How are you feeling?" she asked. When Gilbert tried to pull away from her hands, she let him sit back down on the bed unassisted.

"'M fine," he said, sitting and rubbing his temple with the hand that didn't have an IV. "How long've I been out?"

"You were admitted two days ago, sir. You'd been unconscious for a concerning amount of time," she said, moving quickly to check his vitals and pick up a clipboard. "How are you feeling? Any tightness in your chest or numbness in your limbs?"

"Nothing unusual," Gilbert said. "I mean, I feel way shittier than normal, but…"

When Gilbert failed to complete his sentence, she nodded and gave him a polite smile, "We recommend taking it easy for a while. The Sandgem nurses weren't able to find your ID or license, so we weren't able to reach your emergency contacts or look up any pre-existing conditions. They also weren't able to tell us how you'd gotten in your condition, except that you'd been conscious on the floor of a pokemon center for three days and been refusing to move or to be treated."

"Oh. I don't really…remember much of that. It's all kinda a blur after laying down," Gilbert said. He tapped his head and wiggled his fingers a bit for effect.

She did not appear amused by the wiggling fingers. Instead, she pursed her lips and frowned a bit. Snowpoint nurses officially were better than Jubilife. This one was still doing okay though. Gilbert stamp of adequacy.

"I see," she said, and made a note on her clipboard. "We'd like you to rest a while longer, but if you feel up to it, the police requested to be contacted when you woke up. They want to speak with you about what happened, when you're feeling up to it. First, though, we'll need your name to access your previous medical records and alert your emergency contact."

"Uh," Gilbert said, "Sure. But I don't have an emergency contact. The one listed is outdated."

The last thing he needed was his father swooping down to Jubilife to snatch him up, or

Ludwig. Gilbert rememberd.

He could only imagine the reaction if Ludwig discovered Gilbert had been—something. _Something._ For a week. Though, it wouldn't be _terrible_ if Ludwig knew, he could work to keep their father out of the picture, but—

But that was a terrible thought and he really shouldn't have even considered it?

Ludwig was absolutely not going to know about this. He'd flip his shit. He would never stop panicking if he found out something like this had happened.

The nurse spoke again. He missed the words. He stuttered a moment before giving his name.

She hurried off and alerted the doctor, leaving Gilbert a few quiet minutes to wonder how he'd ever managed to forget his little brother, even if only for a few moments. After waking from a coma. Couldn't comas give you brain damage? He did not need brain damage on top of everything else. 'Maybe you shouldn't have done something that would have potentially given you brain damage,' he could already hear Ludwig's voice say, as if Gilbert had known that was a possible outcome, because of course.

He lay back on his pillow for a few long minutes and tried to relax.

It took a while to chase his little brother's voice out of his head and start talking to himself, again. He wasn't going to be in top condition, he told himself, but he'd always managed just fine as long as he was conscious of his condition.

He took a few seconds to just breathe and pay attention to any physical aches or pains, taking inventory of his body, gently bending all his joints and wiggling his fingers and toes before starting down a different mental checklist.

Gilbert didn't have an ID or license for the police to find. It was fine as long as he didn't use the trainer-only section of the pokemon center or try to claim he'd been on a pokemon journey. If they wanted to know why he'd traveled the whole way across the region without any ID, he could always say he'd lost it in the woods. Or. Or? 

Ivan. They'd been jumped by a mugger with a powerful pokemon. Ivan was holding the bag with their licenses and IDs. Gilbert escaped. Ran—he couldn't remember how long, so saying half a day would have to do. The police would try to find Ivan for him. They would be able to find Ivan better than Gilbert would ever be able to manage on his own.

The police would be able to find Ivan, as long as he wasn't a corpse in the mud in that cave.

(Gilbert's elbow went numb. He rubbed at it.)

What else? What else.

Make sure no one called his family. Go along with whatever treatment. It was a mugger and exhaustion. The effect of a strange pokemon. Yeah, Sinnoh had a very safe route system, but even Kanto had theft on the routes sometimes, so it could happen—he was forgetting, though, he was forgetting—

"Oh," Gilbert said as the nurse entered once again, a cart of medical supplies in front of her and an officer in blue behind. "Hey. Where's my pokemon? S'a chatot. Frumpy little guy. I'd've thought she'd demand to watch over me?"

The nurse blinked at him before glancing over her shoulder to the officer. Their faces grew tight. "There weren't any pokemon with you when you were admitted, sir."

000

**Of all the regions, Sinnoh's routes are some of the safest. The crime rate is relatively low due to the collaboration of the region's many small towns forming a crime watch ring, and most of the towns are close together or have several rest-stops between them which can easily be reached after a day of walking for an able-bodied person. Therefore, the minimum age for a trainer's license in Sinnoh is twelve—the roads are considered safe enough for a twelve year old with a partner to travel independently. Theft on the routes and dangerously violent pokemon attacks are considered very rare occurrences. **

**Kanto and Jhoto are considered the safest regions to travel in, and their minimum age is ten. Kalos is considered the most dangerous, with the minimum age set at sixteen, but most trainers waiting two more years before setting out, if they set out at all.**

**(Thank you to everyone who's read this story so far. If you read my other works, you know my update schedule can be… slow. I want to change that, though. I'm planning on trying to implement short and quick updates, like I did when I was a kid, instead of these incredibly long waits. This also will let people have more opportunities to send in suggestions for people, pokemon, or places they'd like to see. The story is mostly set, but I'd love your recommendations anyway or may write a side-story for them if they really strike me but I can't fit it in. Thank you all again for reading this. I hope you continue to enjoy the story. All comments are appreciated, even if I do not or cannot respond to them—thank you again for leaving them.)**


	4. Chapter 4

**warning for background death **

000

No trainer's license. No pokeballs.

They'd thought his baby Chatot was wild pokemon he'd saved when she was too injured to flee, and released her as soon as her wounds healed.

They'd released his baby girl.

And some intern who hadn't gotten the memo called his emergency contact number, anyway. His still very active, very much not out of date, emergency contact number.

Now, Gilbert was sitting in the route checkpoint between Jubilife and Route 218, where Ludwig and his father would soon be arriving from Canalave's ports. They'd filed a missing person's report over a month ago, apparently. Now, there was a police officer to his left, standing at ease, and waiting to make sure that Gilbert didn't run away before his family arrived.

Running away was a complicated thing in a world where twelve year olds were expected to leave for months at a time.

But those twelve year olds were generally expected to return home fairly soon. Their parents had granted them permission to leave home by giving them a trainer's license.

So that would probably have made Gilbert less independent than a twelve year old, huh.

Just some fuckup who took his baby to a pokemon center only to be inattentive enough that they released her.

"Hey," he said. The officer looked over. She looked young, not too much older than him, and was standing at ease with her hands clasped behind her back when he spoke. "How do shiny pokemon usually fare in the wild?"

"Oh, um," she said, shifting. "They aren't… shinies are usually rare because they're the result of mutations. Most of them aren't… _advantageous_, per say. But that's not to say that some don't thrive just fine."

"Some," Gilbert said.

"Your Chatot had already survived in the wild once, didn't she? I'm sure she's fine."

Gilbert felt the words forming in him, the ones to say _yeah she survived getting lost and almost freezing to death, _but didn't say them aloud. Instead, he nodded to the officer, added in a dull, 'yeah, you're probably right,' and settled back down to wait.

He could probably sue. But his head was too busy screaming for him to really think of doing very much but staring around the room and remembering to breathe.

The checkpoint wasn't very busy at the moment. The morning rush had subsided before Gilbert and the officer had ever arrived. A single janitor left a few minutes earlier, after finishing picking up the remaining litter from the hoard of people entering Jubilife for the daily commute. A trio of trainers stood in a line in front of the booth. One spoke to the checkpoint operator while the other two picked over tourist pamphlets from a brochure rack in the corner. The news screens wrapping around the walls was the loudest thing outside Gilbert's head, but operated at exactly the level of a bored drone. The police officer regarded the others in the checkpoint with a passive interest. One of the passerby trainers broke from the brochure rack and bought three drinks from the vending machine.

Gilbert's elbow throbbed. He'd been given a painkiller and been wrapped up in enough bandages to make a poor dusclops costume, but even though his coughing had subsided these last few days and the rest of his aches seemed to be muted, his elbow just wouldn't stop prickling at him.

Grumbling, Gilbert reached down and picked up his bag, pulling it close to his chest. He'd lost his hiking backpack during his dazed flight from Lake Verity, but the hospital spare's items area (the lost and found and _stolen_) had provided him with a ratty traveler's bag, a t-shirt and jeans, and a notebook half-filled with what appeared to be a child's mathematic equations. He planned to tear out the used pages, but hadn't quite gotten around to it yet.

Digging through the traveler's bag, he pulled out the notebook, ignoring its metallic cover. He mumbled, 'gonna borrow a pen,' before slinking up to the counter. There was only one checkpoint officer out at the moment, so instead of bothering her, Gilbert moved to an empty booth nearby, plucking up one of the complimentary pens that he was pretty sure were free to anyone using the checkpoint. Advertising was weird, but maybe it was a bribe. Good faith in the government and all that. It was probably not theft.

Even though it was probably not theft, he _did _hear the policewoman gasp, but didn't see her gesture to the checkpoint officer. He _did _notice when the volume of the news screen abruptly increased. The three other trainers were jarred by the volume change as well, and spun about to look. They gasped, prompting Gilbert to turn as well, and join them in staring up in gaping horror at the smoldering hole on the checkpoint's news screen.

_….in, this is a live news report from Geosenge in Kalos, where a terrorist organization known as 'Team Flare' has just_destroyed _the majority of the town. It is unknown how many civilian fatalities or injuries have occurred, but the Kalosian national guard has secured the perimeter and is urging anyone who may have any information to come forward._

The newscaster kept speaking, though they were completely out of screen as footage kept rolling. It must have been shot from a helicopter circling the area, judging from the high angle and slow circling of the hole. The soldiers and pokemon arriving to help were small specks among the rubble of houses and what appeared to be huge stones—but it gave him a little perspective on exactly how huge the hole was. How massive the cloud of dust

_Emergency vehicles are on the scene now, I'm hearing reports that—oh, _[the screen stuttered over the word]_. There are reports that several _children_ entered the crater shortly after its creation some half an hour ago; we have no way of knowing if they are alive and well—_

"What the fuck?" Gilbert whispered, staring.

The police officer nodded, her hands cupped over her mouth.

000

It was a long time before Gilbert's family arrived.

The wall screen was still playing its emergency report—showing clips of the smoldering crater in between interviews and reports. The region's main professor was in tears, leaning heavily on an assistant for support. Kalos had not two, not three, but _six_ dex holders, and at least two were confirmed among the children trapped inside the wreckage. Some trillionare had been identified as the main culprit, Gilbert's elbow was sending painful bolts of numbness up his wrist, a steady weight was growing in the pit of his stomach, and his father walked through the door without any knowledge of any of it.

"Gilbert!"

The three trainers in the corner had huddled together and now all sprung up in panic at the sudden intrusion, but Gilbert's father paid them little mind. He swept past and before Gilbert was able to react or run away, had swept his son up in a hug.

"Eeech?" Gilbert said, too startled to pull away. "I uh," not that it felt awful? "Vati?"

"_What in the world possessed you to do something so hair brained and foolish?"_

Okay, that was better. Gilbert was thrust out of the hug abruptly and found himself leaning against the counter and throwing out his arm for purchase.

He always forgot how huge his dad was. How huge his family was in general— (how big he probably would've been, but hey, he was handsome, so they should have been the ones complaining.) —but after not having seen his father for months, it was a whole nother ball game of height. Gilbert only came up to his father's chest and had almost gotten lost in it during the hug, and was still reeling a bit from being so thoroughly dwarfed as Mr. Beilschmidt resolutely ignored any sort of scene he was causing by launching into a spiel about irresponsibility and personal risk, knocking the disaster report on the wall to the sidelines.

"—you could have _died_, you could have been _hurt. _Winding up in the hospital in a _coma_—"

Behind his father, Ludwig shifted from foot to foot, glancing between Gilbert, the wall, and Mr. Beilschmidt in rapid succession, fidgeting with his hands in front of him.

(a few words like _irresponsible _and _selfish _were thrown around. Gilbert raised his hand to wave at his little brother while his father took a breath. Ludwig visibly shifted back, but gave a small smile and wave in return.)

"We're going back home first thing in the morning," his father finished before turning to the police officer still standing beside him. "Thank you so much for contacting us, I didn't know what to do—"

Gilbert slunk away from the conversation the moment the attention was off him, intentionally tuning out the officers platitudes and his father's thinly hidden anger. When he wasn't pulled back right away, and he kept going, closing the last few steps between himself and Ludwig in short order.

His younger brother's smile looked sort of crooked. Like he was trying very hard to keep it on his face, but really wanted to be doing anything else.

"Hey," Gilbert said.

"Is that it?" Ludwig said. The smile kept trying to morph downward.

"'Is that it' about what?"

Ludwig grunted, losing his smile finally and simply crossing his arms, his shoulders slumping and his clothes sagging on him. He looked like he hadn't slept in several days. His hair wasn't well jelled or combed, and he seemed taller than when Gilbert had last seen him. Or perhaps, simply thinner?

"Where's Chatot?" Ludwig said after another slow glance around while their father continued to chat up the police officer.

Whatever good humor he'd managed to scrape back together in the last few days left him all over again, along with the last of the moisture in his mouth and the cough steadily rising in his throat.

Behind them, the news had started showing bodies being pulled from the rubble.

No trainer's license. No pokeballs.

They'd thought his baby Chatot was wild pokemon he'd saved when she was too injured to flee, and released her as soon as her wounds healed.

They'd released his baby girl.

And some intern who hadn't gotten the memo called his emergency contact number, anyway. His still very active, very much not out of date, emergency contact number.

Now, Gilbert was sitting in the route checkpoint between Jubilife and Route 218, where Ludwig and his father would soon be arriving from Canalave's ports. They'd filed a missing person's report over a month ago, apparently. Now, there was a police officer to his left, standing at ease, and waiting to make sure that Gilbert didn't run away before his family arrived.

Running away was a complicated thing in a world where twelve year olds were expected to leave for months at a time.

But those twelve year olds were generally expected to return home fairly soon. Their parents had granted them permission to leave home by giving them a trainer's license.

So that would probably have made Gilbert less independent than a twelve year old, huh.

Just some fuckup who took his baby to a pokemon center only to be inattentive enough that they released her.

"Hey," he said. The officer looked over. She looked young, not too much older than him, and was standing at ease with her hands clasped behind her back when he spoke. "How do shiny pokemon usually fare in the wild?"

"Oh, um," she said, shifting. "They aren't… shinies are usually rare because they're the result of mutations. Most of them aren't… _advantageous_, per say. But that's not to say that some don't thrive just fine."

"Some," Gilbert said.

"Your Chatot had already survived in the wild once, didn't she? I'm sure she's fine."

Gilbert felt the words forming in him, the ones to say _yeah she survived getting lost and almost freezing to death, _but didn't say them aloud. Instead, he nodded to the officer, added in a dull, 'yeah, you're probably right,' and settled back down to wait.

He could probably sue. But his head was too busy screaming for him to really think of doing very much but staring around the room and remembering to breathe.

The checkpoint wasn't very busy at the moment. The morning rush had subsided before Gilbert and the officer had ever arrived. A single janitor left a few minutes earlier, after finishing picking up the remaining litter from the hoard of people entering Jubilife for the daily commute. A trio of trainers stood in a line in front of the booth. One spoke to the checkpoint operator while the other two picked over tourist pamphlets from a brochure rack in the corner. The news screens wrapping around the walls was the loudest thing outside Gilbert's head, but operated at exactly the level of a bored drone. The police officer regarded the others in the checkpoint with a passive interest. One of the passerby trainers broke from the brochure rack and bought three drinks from the vending machine.

Gilbert's elbow throbbed. He'd been given a painkiller and been wrapped up in enough bandages to make a poor dusclops costume, but even though his coughing had subsided these last few days and the rest of his aches seemed to be muted, his elbow just wouldn't stop prickling at him.

Grumbling, Gilbert reached down and picked up his bag, pulling it close to his chest. He'd lost his hiking backpack during his dazed flight from Lake Verity, but the hospital spare's items area (the lost and found and _stolen_) had provided him with a ratty traveler's bag, a t-shirt and jeans, and a notebook half-filled with what appeared to be a child's mathematic equations. He planned to tear out the used pages, but hadn't quite gotten around to it yet.

Digging through the traveler's bag, he pulled out the notebook, ignoring its metallic cover. He mumbled, 'gonna borrow a pen,' before slinking up to the counter. There was only one checkpoint officer out at the moment, so instead of bothering her, Gilbert moved to an empty booth nearby, plucking up one of the complimentary pens that he was pretty sure were free to anyone using the checkpoint. Advertising was weird, but maybe it was a bribe. Good faith in the government and all that. It was probably not theft.

Even though it was probably not theft, he _did _hear the policewoman gasp, but didn't see her gesture to the checkpoint officer. He _did _notice when the volume of the news screen abruptly increased. The three other trainers were jarred by the volume change as well, and spun about to look. They gasped, prompting Gilbert to turn as well, and join them in staring up in gaping horror at the smoldering hole on the checkpoint's news screen.

_….in, this is a live news report from Geosenge in Kalos, where a terrorist organization known as 'Team Flare' has just_destroyed _the majority of the town. It is unknown how many civilian fatalities or injuries have occurred, but the Kalosian national guard has secured the perimeter and is urging anyone who may have any information to come forward._

The newscaster kept speaking, though they were completely out of screen as footage kept rolling. It must have been shot from a helicopter circling the area, judging from the high angle and slow circling of the hole. The soldiers and pokemon arriving to help were small specks among the rubble of houses and what appeared to be huge stones—but it gave him a little perspective on exactly how huge the hole was. How massive the cloud of dust

_Emergency vehicles are on the scene now, I'm hearing reports that—oh, _[the screen stuttered over the word]_. There are reports that several _children_ entered the crater shortly after its creation some half an hour ago; we have no way of knowing if they are alive and well—_

"What the fuck?" Gilbert whispered, staring.

The police officer nodded, her hands cupped over her mouth.

000

It was a long time before Gilbert's family arrived.

The wall screen was still playing its emergency report—showing clips of the smoldering crater in between interviews and reports. The region's main professor was in tears, leaning heavily on an assistant for support. Kalos had not two, not three, but _six_ dex holders, and at least two were confirmed among the children trapped inside the wreckage. Some trillionare had been identified as the main culprit, Gilbert's elbow was sending painful bolts of numbness up his wrist, a steady weight was growing in the pit of his stomach, and his father walked through the door without any knowledge of any of it.

"Gilbert!"

The three trainers in the corner had huddled together and now all sprung up in panic at the sudden intrusion, but Gilbert's father paid them little mind. He swept past and before Gilbert was able to react or run away, had swept his son up in a hug.

"Eeech?" Gilbert said, too startled to pull away. "I uh," not that it felt awful? "Vati?"

"_What in the world possessed you to do something so hair brained and foolish?"_

Okay, that was better. Gilbert was thrust out of the hug abruptly and found himself leaning against the counter and throwing out his arm for purchase.

He always forgot how huge his dad was. How huge his family was in general— (how big he probably would've been, but hey, he was handsome, so they should have been the ones complaining.) —but after not having seen his father for months, it was a whole nother ball game of height. Gilbert only came up to his father's chest and had almost gotten lost in it during the hug, and was still reeling a bit from being so thoroughly dwarfed as Mr. Beilschmidt resolutely ignored any sort of scene he was causing by launching into a spiel about irresponsibility and personal risk, knocking the disaster report on the wall to the sidelines.

"—you could have _died_, you could have been _hurt. _Winding up in the hospital in a _coma_—"

Behind his father, Ludwig shifted from foot to foot, glancing between Gilbert, the wall, and Mr. Beilschmidt in rapid succession, fidgeting with his hands in front of him.

(a few words like _irresponsible _and _selfish _were thrown around. Gilbert raised his hand to wave at his little brother while his father took a breath. Ludwig visibly shifted back, but gave a small smile and wave in return.)

"We're going back home first thing in the morning," his father finished before turning to the police officer still standing beside him. "Thank you so much for contacting us, I didn't know what to do—"

Gilbert slunk away from the conversation the moment the attention was off him, intentionally tuning out the officers platitudes and his father's thinly hidden anger. When he wasn't pulled back right away, and he kept going, closing the last few steps between himself and Ludwig in short order.

His younger brother's smile looked sort of crooked. Like he was trying very hard to keep it on his face, but really wanted to be doing anything else.

"Hey," Gilbert said.

"Is that it?" Ludwig said. The smile kept trying to morph downward.

"'Is that it' about what?"

Ludwig grunted, losing his smile finally and simply crossing his arms, his shoulders slumping and his clothes sagging on him. He looked like he hadn't slept in several days. His hair wasn't well jelled or combed, and he seemed taller than when Gilbert had last seen him. Or perhaps, simply thinner?

"Where's Chatot?" Ludwig said after another slow glance around while their father continued to chat up the police officer.

Whatever good humor he'd managed to scrape back together in the last few days left him all over again, along with the last of the moisture in his mouth and the cough steadily rising in his throat.

Behind them, the news had started showing bodies being pulled from the rubble.

000

**let's try this again**

**comments and reviews are extremely appreciated, thank you!**


End file.
